In 2020, we set ourselves a single, audacious goal: “Put every African startup on the map.” We began with a humble spreadsheet tracking a few hundred companies across the African continent. Today that spreadsheet has grown into the continent’s most comprehensive startup intelligence platform, trusted by investors, corporates, researchers and founders in 70+ countries. Along the way we have:
- Indexed thousands of African startups spanning 1800+ industries.
- Tracked $36 billion+ in disclosed funding rounds, acquisitions and exits.
- Curated a living library of 4,000+ investors, LPs and corporate venture arms backing African innovation.
- Built a real-time news engine that surfaces product launches, fund-raises and ecosystem moves within minutes of publication. Today we’re thrilled to unveil the next chapter.
Why we rebuilt the StartupList Africa Dashboard
Our community has grown far beyond “discovery.” Analysts want deeper benchmarks, founders want sharper competitive intelligence, and corporates want signal — not noise — in a sea of press releases. The new platform is designed to deliver exactly that: actionable, always-fresh data wrapped in a user experience that feels familiar, fast and powerful.
What’s new (and why it matters)
1. Real-Time Dashboard
You land on a single screen that answers the question “What’s happening in African tech right now?”
- Dynamic stats — total startups, funding velocity, active investors — updated as soon as we ingest new data.
- Interactive charts so you can slice by country, industry or stage without downloading a CSV.
- Personalised trends backed by your watch-list.
2. Ecosystem Feed
Think of it as your newsroom-meets-Bloomberg terminal for Africa:
- Funding announcements, M&A, leadership changes and product launches delivered in a scroll-friendly timeline.
- Smart filters let you zero in on fintech in Francophone Africa or deep-tech exits in Egypt — whatever moves your thesis.
- Built-in “Back to Top” button (yes, we sweat the details).
3. Startup Comparison Tool
Founders and analysts asked for a fair way to size up competitors. We answered:
- Side-by-side view of up to six startups: funding history, traction proxies, social following and more.
- AI-powered summaries turn dense tables into one-paragraph insights you can paste into an investment memo.
- Save, share or export comparisons with a click — perfect for Monday partner meetings.
4. Investor & People Directories (Beta)
We moved beyond company data.
- Investor database: filter by cheque size, sector focus, geography, activity level or portfolio count.
- People directory: track founders, angels and ecosystem operators, cross-linked to the companies and deals that define their track record.
- Export to Excel or PDF for your pipeline reviews.
⠀5. Privacy-Friendly Alerts Instead of drowning in newsletters, set a watch-list and receive instant, non-intrusive notifications when:
- A competitor raises capital.
- Your favourite VC opens a new Africa fund.
- A talent you admire starts a stealth venture.
⠀6. Built for Teams Data is only useful when it flows. The new platform supports:
- Multi-seat workspaces — invite teammates, assign roles, keep everyone in sync.
- Shareable comparison links — no more screenshots in Slack.
- Upcoming API access for internal dashboards and research models.
What next?
Over the next few months the canvas gets bigger. Expect an entire toolkit of new superpowers, from custom dashboards you can remix on the fly to a Deep Analytics studio that transforms raw StartupList Africa data into beautiful, share-ready charts, heat-maps, and infographic templates. Coupled with upcoming API hooks and AI-assisted forecasting, these tools turn the dashboard into a true decision engine, giving you the clarity (and the visuals) to tell data-driven stories at investor meetings, boardrooms, or your next tweet-storm.
Who benefits most
| Investors | Pipeline faster, validate deals, benchmark valuations in seconds. |
| Researchers | Clean, structured datasets for longitudinal studies — no scraping needed. |
| Entrepreneurs | Spot white-space, size markets, monitor rivals, woo investors. |
| Corporates | Surface acquisition targets, co-innovation partners and early-stage bets. |
Our North Star: “Data for Africa, by Africans.”
We believe world-class data infrastructure is a prerequisite for world-class innovation on the continent. Every feature you see is built by a distributed team in Abuja, Lagos, Nairobi and Cape Town — people who understand the nuance behind each line of data.
Join us
The new StartupList Africa is live at https://app.startuplist.africa. Sign up, kick the tyres, and tell us what you love (or hate). Early adopters get three months of PRO features free — our way of saying thank you for believing in African innovation. Together, let’s turn raw data into smarter bets, bolder research and faster growth for the continent we call home.
Onward, The StartupList Africa Team